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tv   The Cycle  MSNBC  October 5, 2012 12:00pm-1:00pm PDT

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we put both dynamics to the test. >> all that and viewer mail. got an interesting one from scott in massachusetts. your weekend begins right now. it's "the cycle" for friday, october 5th. many people thought this week president obama wouldvy strong debate performance that would be erased by a weak jobs number, but it's the opposite. the jobs report is in easing concern about obama's weak debate. nate silver said first day in while obama is is happy for everyone to talk about the economy because the numbers are better than expected with the unemployment rate dropping to 7.8%, a four-year low. exactly where it was when president obama took office. there was only a net gain of 114,000 jobs created last month. too low for sustained
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unemployment reduction. so something for both sides to like. the president has to be thrilled about this jobs numbers, though. it's a game changer unless it's not. the president is the out on the trail pushing it. >> as a nation we are moving forward again. we're moving forward. more people are getting jobs. now, every month reminds us that we've still got too many of our friends and neighbors looking for work. today's news certainly is not an excuse to talk down the economy to score a few political points. it's a reminder that this country has come too far to turn back now. >> my friends, whenever fall comes the leaves turn pretty colors and the jobs numbers bring in our dynamic duo, peter and jared. how are you my wonky friends? >> we're wonking along. >> we're pretty wonky. >> do you think that wonk
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spelled backwards is know? >> excellent. you just blew my mind. >> as is k-n-o-w. were you trying to figure out whether i meant it was n-o. >> you're burning up the time. he wants to talk about the president's great numbers. >> you have to love the 7.8% number. talk about that. >> there's two ways to bring the unemployment rate down. in august the unemployment rate ticked down by 0.2% because a bunch of people left the job market. in september it was the opposite. lots of people got jobs, the unemployment rate fell 0.3%. one, you have a little momentum but the monthly numbers are volatile and jump about. one point on that. you mentioned 114,000 jobs on the payrolls. that's an okay number. there were upward revisions to the prior two months. over the past three third, which is the third quarter of the year, payrolls grew about 150,000 per month.
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the second quarter of this year they only grew about 70,000 per month. faster momentum on the payroll growth side as well. >> peter, romney's talking point for months now is the unemployment rate is above 8% every month since obama took office. with that out the window, his new talking point is 114,000 new jobs created and labor participation. >> fewer new jobs created this month and last month. the unemployment rate as you noted this year has come down very veshgs slowly. the reason it came down this year is primarily due to the fact that more and more have just stopped looking for work. if you just drop out of the work force, if you give up and say, i can't go back to work. i'm going to stay home. if you drop out altogether, you're no longer part of the employment statistics. so it looks like employment is better, but if the same share of people were participating in the work force today is as on the day the president got elected
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the unemployment rate would be around 11%. >> peter, when romney was governor of massachusetts, the unemployment rate went down because a lot of people left the state. is he fair to make this point now? >> i think it is fair to say that the unemployment rate has come down simply over the course of this recovery and the bahama presidency because fewer people looked for work. if the same number of people were looking for work today as when mr. obama became president, that number is consistent with my computations. it's important to recognize that this month the household survey for which unemployment rate is computed as opposed to the jobs count and enterprises indicated that about 800,000 people found jobs. that's about 6% increase in the number of people employed, which is an absurd number. no one can believe we have a 135% annual growth rate in employment with the economy growing so slowly. what it appears is a lot of folks out of work have established home-based businesses and they're working
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on some kind of part-time basis. a reporter that lost his job working as a stringer or something. i don't view the 7.8% as encouraging at aall. >> we've been talking the last few weeks about poll truthisms. maybe not accepting they're ahead in the poll. today we learn about something to call bls truthism where we have republicans and romney supporters openly saying there's numbers are cooked. i want to put a couple tweets on the screen from earlier today. jack welch said unbelievable job numbers. these chicago guys will do anything. can't debate so change numbers. let's get the second one up. the second theory proposed is from a conservative righter. i don't think bls cooked the numbers. i think a bunch of dems lied about getting job. that has the same effect. quickly, make your point. it's depressing to ask this question, but how can we be confident because the numbers
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are legit? >> you have to know something about the bureau of labor statistics. this is an institution with incredible statistical integrity in how they collect, analyze and report the data. this is an absolutely ludicrous claim. we shouldn't give it any oxygen. in fact, half the people who are saying they don't believe the numbers then start citing bls numbers to show other point they want to make. this agency has been reporting these data for decades. the security that goes around. i've been writing about this on my blog today to see the details about how they make sure there's no political bias in here. it's absolutely the case that any statistical measure has sampling error and they're straightforward about that. listen, to get back to the numbers and i agree with peter on the point that the numbers do exhibit some volatility month-to-month. the household survey was quite flat on the employment side for a number of months and it made
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it up in one month. i don't believe that's the case, but i think if you average these numbers out the labor market has a considerably more momentum than you get from early mitt romney or peter's comments earlier. >> listen, i'm going to admit readily i'm not smart enough to speculated whether or not these numbers are right or wrong. i'm going to take them at face value. if we take them at face value, let's look at manufacturing numbers. they're way down again. is that a sector that just doesn't behave in line with the other sectors, or is there something special about this past month and manufacturing? >> the last several months manufacturing news has not been good, and we've had a couple of months in a row of declining manufacturing employment, which is not surprising. what i found disturbing about where the jobs are is they were in health care. there was like 44,000 in health care and social services and another 10,000 in government employment. the private sector didn't show robust jobs growth in month. i want to underscore in the spirit of bipartisan agreement
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among economists, i can't accept that bls would cook numbers. the only thing worse you could do is say my mother didn't love me. >> we can't quantify that, can we? >> well said. >> jared, so the next time we meet for a jobs report friday it will be the friday before election day. anything that you can pull from trends that you see or from this report that gives us any hint what might be in the next jobs report? >> look, i think there's -- as i mentioned, i think there's a bit of momentum here, but i don't think we're seeing a job market that's anywhere near full employment. i expect us to continue to make slow progress. next month will probably be too late for people to change political perceptions about the job market by the time the number comes out. what the president can and will say is that the kind of report he got today supports his
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narrative we're moving in the right direction, perhaps with more momentum than we thought. >> peter. >> well, the jobs report didn't show much of an uptick in the adult participation rate, and at some point if the economy does continue to improve in the way jared describes, more folks get off the bench and look for work. at that point the unemployment rate goes back up. if it were to do that in the october job report issued the first week in november, that might help mr. romney, but it is so close that friday to the following tuesday, i don't think it's going to register in people's minds if it ticks up a couple tenths of a percent. it has to be dramatic, and i don't see that happening. >> the democrats are going to get george soros to get people to stay on the sidelines for the election, so we'll be all good. >> we should make krystal the
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head of the dnc. up next mitt romney courting the 47%? does he think people have amnesia? the spin cycle is next as we roll on for friday, october 5th. [ female announcer ] ready for a taste of what's hot? check out the latest collection of snacks from lean cuisine.
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there was no mistaking there was a fire-breathing lefty to stage spewing rhetoric. >> i will not reduce the taxes paid by high income americans. regulation is essential. you can't have a free market work if you don't have regulation. pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan. with regard to health care what we did in massachusetts is a
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model for the nation state by state. ♪ stuck in the middle with you ♪ >> that fire-breathing lefty mitt romney there's lot of talk about him moving to the middle in his rhetoric. last night he said this. >> in a campaign with hundreds if not thousands of speeches and question and answer sessions, now and then you say and that doesn't come out right. in this case that's something that's completely wrong. i absolutely believe, however, that my life has shown i care about 100%. >> krystal said he would double-down or walk it back. you did it again. >> what can i say? >> what a way to start the spin cycle. i've also heard and it should be pointed out there's a lot of hang-wringing on the far left
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about obama's moderate debate performance. his sort of mealy mouth stance on social security, failing to call out the do-good, do-nothing republican congress. tchs a mealy mouth performance not just on tone but substance. obama was out on the stump the very next day sounding very much like his old self. i feel as though, you know, the conventions give you permission to be the wild-eyed partisan, but for that to work, you really have to have applause. at these debates when you're with an actual audience and the audience is silent, you really can't -- those red meat lines don't work as well. you have to take on a more moderate tone. steve, what do you think? is this historically the time during the campaign, the conventions are over, when the candidates both kind of come back to the center and stop
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flinging the red meat to try and talk right down the middle? >> there's a very important difference between how obama is approaching going after the middle in this campaign and how he did in his presidency and what romney is now doing. the story line from pundits and the press now is romney is moving to the middle. that's certainly the tone of what he did in the debate. that's the tone his rhetoric. it was centrist. the question is whether it's obama sounding like a centrist in the debate or romney sounding like a centrist in the debate. is it backed up by substance? on romney's side the answer is flatly now. if you look at the policies which he did not want to get into on wednesday night, they are not centrist in any way. we had in the clip saying pre-existing conditions are covered under the plan. of course you want to say that. that's a centrist-sounding thing. are they covered under romney's plan? no. he says i'm not offering a tax cut to the wealthy. is that actually true? no. his plan actually would
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dramatically decrease the tax burden on the wealthy in this country. now, contrast that with obama. contrast that with how he has governed. if he sounds like a centrist in the debate, has he governed more as a centrist. look at health care. he took the individual mandate, a republican idea and proposed a plan and implemented a plan friendly to the private insurance industry. wall street reform. liberals say he didn't go far enough. he mentioned social security. he was willing to cut a grand bargain with republicans last year on social security and medicare. the key point is this, i think. if you're a liberal you have a lot of room to criticize from the left the actual actions that obama has taken as president and the policies he's proposed. if you're a conserve it active and looking at mitt romney, you may not like him personally. you may not think in his heart of hearts he's a true believer, but you have no ground to object to him when it comes to policy, because the republican party platform in year is as conservative as its ever been.
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that, from a policy standpoint, is what he's running on. >> steve, that's absolutely right. to say mitt romney is moving to the middle is a bit overstated. he's just misstating his policies. he's saying i believe something else. teddy kennedy, you're multiple choice. at this point in the election, a hardened electorate, the steadiest race in years, can you say if no, my policies are different than what i said for months and think motors will peel away from obama and the undecided to low information voters not paying attention and may not show up at all, they're going to roll with you because you say, actually, i believe this, when i believe that. especially even the 47% thing, which before he came out right after, he said that was inelegantly stated but that's what i believe. no, that's not what i believe now. who are you? will the real mitt romney please stand up? >> s.e. asked the question about
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the timing of the rhetorical shift. i would say his base hadn't given him permission to make that shift. the 47% comments are a perfect example. when it came out he did the press conference and reiterated his comments. he said they were inartful and did not take it back. now that the base has stared down the possibility of real defeat and realized that is a true possibility, he now has the political capital and the wiggle room to make that rhetorical shift to the center, which is why you see him now totally walking back as i predicted he might do or double-down. >> is it the base giving him more space or he always does this movement back and forth? >> i think he's afraid of the base up until now. >> can i ask a quick question? >> he's given more room. after the debate there was no criticism from the right about that rhetorical shift to the center. >> let me just ask a quick
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question. you can very honest here. why when mitt romney comes out and says maybe i should have said that differently does this mean he's a completely different person, and when president obama has come out in the past as he said many times i should have said that differently or i didn't mean that, whether it was you didn't build that comment, the guns and religion comment, criticizing the cambridge police, he's done this a number of times. doesn't that have the same effect or resonance on his character? >> s.e., what i would say from a political angle and from where the media says this is a story, romney's remark wasn't just in temperate. it reflected a very hard, right political philosophy and a philosophy hostile in the fundamental way to the social safety net in this country. to the concept. >> steve, the president's comments reflected a far left position as well when it comes to you didn't build that or people cling to guns and
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religion. that's a political comment and statement as well. >> we're not litigating the comments here. we're talking about the fact it's remarkable when he first came out to address it, he basically backed up the comments and reiterated the essence of what he was saying. tried to clean it up a bit, but reiterated the essence. now he says he has it completely wrong. i don't want to let this block end. >> that's beautiful. one, just to address what you say, s.e. all politicians have to walk things back occasionally. it seems clear going back to massachusetts mitt romney lacked a political spine and will say whatever it takes to win. that's not the case with obama. >> we have to address the elephant in the room or the big bird in the room. peggy noonan actually writing in the "wall street journal" today. watch out for big bird. putting pbs funding aside mitt romney gave a small gift to the
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incumbents. big birds will show up outside romney rallies showing up signs say don't kill me. think this through. i have to say i didn't predict this was a big issue out of the debate, but there was big bird showing up at rallies. it's funny out of the debate the two big take-aways were the president lost and big bird. >> big bird the definite winner. >> and let me say as somebody who has to bring it back to the 1990s and 1980s, chicken george, 1992. george bush wouldn't debate. they sent a chicken to rallies to taunt him. >> not a good day for birds. can a bad campaigner make a good president? at least one candidate in this campaign is hoping so.
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two minutes. >> just like the thunder dome from mad max. campaigns are a battle to the death, but in politics the death is figurativfigurative, which i worst. why i love campaigns. but you've got to sell your soul in order to win. do campaigns prepare you to be president or let us see men bleed on the national stage? john gear is in the guest spot today. he chairs the political science department at vanderbilt university. how are you, sir? >> i'm fine. how are you? >> i'm good. i'm a person that believes that campaigns matter, that campaigning and governing are different jobs with different skill sets. can you talk about the impact of
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how campaigning is like governing and how campaigning is different than governing? >> there's certainly similari similariti similarities. when you're president of the united states, you need to do persuading. there are certain skill sets in common. one of the big differences when you campaign, you can be pretty vague and you can hedge. when you're governing, you have to make choices, and you've got to make decisions that have real policy implications. that's the big difference. >> can you name people who ran bad campaigns and were good presidents, and then people who ran good campaigns. >> i suspect the example of someone running a good campaign but not good as president might be lyndon johnson in '64. he ran a very powerful campaign and won 62%, 63% of the vote but didn't govern effectively.
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>> you know, john, i think it was sydney bloomentha hal who described it, but the process is eternal. it's endless. i kind of wonder when we talk about the connection between campaign skills and governing skills, if came paining is permanent, it's political too. you understand incentives in the system and messages and that sort of thing. there's a connection between -- you can't be a good president without being a good candidate. >> that's right. i think that we saw in 2008 barack obama was a very good candidate, beating people like hillary clinton and john mccain. when he became president, he forgofo forgot the skills. consider after passing the campaign law and telling the american people what it was, persuading it about the merits, he let the republicans do that. now it's obama care and it's unpopular because he let that gap be filled by the opposition.
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>> john, speaking of that 2008 campaign, one of the things that impressed me and i think impressed a lot of people was not just the mail and the messages and the ads out of the obama campaign, but the actual perception they were running an effective campaign and he was an effective leader because of that campaign. does that typically persuade voters, the perception of a good campaign? >> i think it does. it suggests he can manage a big undertaking because a presidential campaign is large and messy, trust me. he managed it with great success in 2008. beating hillary clinton, coming out of nowhere, defeating john mccain. there were very few mistakes common about bitter and guns and religion in pennsylvania was certainly one mistake. he didn't make very many mistakes that whole time. >> john, putting bad campaigners aside for a minute, let's talk
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about reluctant campaigners. i think the skill set to be a good campaigner and the skill set to be a good leader might be in direct opposition to someone. if someone is a reluctant salesman, humble and reluctant to take the spotlight, that might make him a good leader. george washington had to be convinced to take the job the first time, was reluctant to take it the second and refused the third and had to be convinced to take a salary. obviously, he was one of our better presidents. >> he was maybe greatest by some standards. that was a different era. he couldn't look ambitious because of fears of being a king and all like that. i suspect reluctant campaigners who have been good leaders. maybe someone like dwight eisenhower. i don't think he relished campaigning, but he certainly relished governing and making decision and he was pretty good at it.
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it was somewhat reluctant. this long campaign discourages a lot of people elected because they have to be at it so long and for so many hours on every single day. >> the romney campaign has been riffe with gaffes. they've been changing message repeatedly. they haven't effectively sold their candidate. a lot don't think it's a good campaign at all, but you don't agree with that. is that right? >> i think it's premature in the sense in 1980 ronald reagan was running a bad campaign by lots of standards. he made a comment that trees pollute and that didn't go over well. he did say that. i'm serious. he made lots of other gaffes, but he went on to be president beating carter by quite a bit. i think romney is looking for a message. he produced a huge number of ads looking for something. maybe something comes out of the debate. this electorate is pretty hardened, and obama should be up by a point or two given the
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economy. that's where we are. so romney has not run a great campaign so far, but maybe this debate provides a springboard. we'll see. >> we will see. john gear, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> all the focus is on the candidates this month. october is also important for another reason. it's got something to do with this. >> we can handle gimpy and the at that rant at that heads, because our invitation was not based on barf and mike and molly as part of the crew. >> i guess we're not in the crew anymore. >> you know, i was kind of hoping you'd say that. >> with that, order is restored! [ female announcer ] born from the naturally sweet monk fruit,
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first, the truth is i'm overweight and you can call me fat and even obese on a doctor's chart. but to the person that wrote pe that letter, do you think i
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don't know that? that your cruel words are pointing out something i don't see? you don't know me. you are not a friend of mine. you are not a part of my family, and you have admitted that you don't watch this show. so you know nothing about me but what you see on the outside, and i am much more than a number on a scale. >> this week emmy-award winning local anchor in wisconsin jennifer livingston took to theary waairwaves about a viewe that criticized her weight. october is anti-bullying month and it starts too early. 160,000 kids miss school every day because they're afraid of being attacked or intimidated, and 1 in 5 teens are bullied in schools. here's a stat you don't hear often. more than half stops in less than ten seconds when another student intervenintervening. we have a guide to help kids
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deal with bullies. carry kerry goldman is the author of "bullied." >> thanks for having he. >> we saw the clip of jennifer, and her courage is incredibly inspiring. the e-mail she received, does that constitute bullying? >> that's a great question you ask. a lot of people don't really know, what the difference between bullying and just a taunt or a tease? basical basically bullying is a repetitive, unwanted negative attack that occurs in the context of a power imbalance. if you break it down, you might say, she received one e-mail, and that may not fall in the category of bullying. it if you look at the mindset behind the e-mail, it's the mindset of a bully. bullying takes place when one person feels a sense of entitlement and feels basically entitled to make a judgment
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about somebody else based solely on skin color or stereotype or appearance. although this was one e-mail he sent, he made this e-mail in the context of a bullying mindset. >> some kids bullied at school come home and tell their parents, and others keep quiet about it. are there warning signing for parents whose kids aren't speaking out to them? >> there definitely are. bullying in schools often takes place in the unmonitored places. a lot happens in the bathrooms or at recess or lunch. if you have a child who comes home desperate it to use the bathroom when they come home, they may have been aafraid to go into the bathrooms all day. if awe chil is starving. they may be aafraid to eat in the lunchroom. with the older girls, every single one i spoke to told me they turned to cutting as a way of managing their pain. a lot of them said they hid the
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cutting from their parents by wearing long sleeved shirts and pants even when the weather was fair. if your daughter ors son wears long-sleeved shirts and pants, you might want to check and make sure nothing is going on. >> when i was a kid what we heard from parents and teachers, not that i was ever bullied, what we used to hear was ignore it. if you give any response to somebody bullying you, you encourage them and make it worse by speaking up. is that just bad advise? >> it's not bad advice. it works sometimes. ignoring is okay in more isolated experiences. like maybe if you're at the movies and someone starts taunting you. it's not someone you're going to see again. you ignore it and they stop. the fact is that true bullying is repetitive by nature, and it's someone who you encounter repeatedly. so if you're on a school bus, for example, and there's a kid
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who is trying to pick on you, ignoring it is less likely to work. it's probably just going to irritate the bully because they feed off a reaction. that kid is going to keep coming back at uday after day. if you are strong enough to ignore it for enough time, it might be that the bully will give up at three, four five weeks but that's not the case with every child. not every child can bear with it. some child get too devastated by what's happening. >> bullying added a whole new wrinkle to this discussion. you can be attacked and bullied and embarrassed in front of your class via facebook and e-mail. how do we deal with that as parents and as people being bullied via the internet? >> well, there are a couple of things. one is that there's just as many adult cyber bullies out there as children. a lot of children are learning about taking aggressive tendencies online from the adults. if you look at the political articles on any major website
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and you look in the comments section, it's riffe with bullying and cyber bullying. the first thing as an adult we need to set a better role model for our children. there are certain technical things to do. in terms of preventing cyber bullying with kids in the house, you have to teach them. teach them every they say and do online is public. there's no such thing as private. if they send a private message to someone, that person can copy and paste it and put it on their facebook wall. if it's private to say, say it in person and not online. second of all, kids need to know not to share their passwords or impersonate somebody else online, not post pictures of themselves in compromising situations online. a lot of kids make bad judgment. all of us when we were kids sometimes made bad judgment, we didn't do it in the context of a digital viral world where you do one stupid thing and it's on youtube for the whole world to
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see. >> i was bullied pretty bad as a kid, and you think it goes away when you become an adult. i think probably because of our jobs, you know, i'm sure i can speak for my co-hosts as well, we've all been bullied on twitter and in e-mails because of what we do. imt not talking about the people who criticize our politics. i'm talking about the people who comment on the way we look -- >> personal attacks. >> or make assumptions about the kinds of people we are without knowing us. isn't this really more about our culture? i mean, certainly kids are worse off trying to handle this than adults, but isn't this just the way we've decided to talk to one another? >> i actually wrote an entire chapter about that called "the culture of aggression and cruelty that we have." you're absolutely correct. we have started to evolve into a society with reality-based tv
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show type pot shots, and twitter and social media where things move very quickly. long conversations where people are able to understand each other and truly communicate has been reduced to a single back and forth text message, which it's a huge situation for misunderstandings, for anger, for aggression. so when we talk about bullying prevention, it's not just that we have to have parents raise elm thettic kids or have schools that teach social skills and teach social emotional learning. there's a bigger picture out there. it's the advertising mess ajs. it's the way that the media and marketing work. it's the sexualization of children. all of these things play into creating a culture of cruelty. we all have a role to play, all of us, in combating bullying. >> all right, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> up next, another area where young people stepping up can make all the difference.
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this election, young gun matt siegel is back in the saddle here on "the cycle" straight ahead. rick! wow, you look terrific! [ female announcer ] crest 3d white glamorous white toothpaste. removes up to 90% of surface stains in just 5 days. crest glamorous white toothpaste. for a smile so white, you won't just be the ex-girlfriend. you'll be the one that got away.
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that takes it down to 11.8%. compare it to the national average of 7.8%. the trend may head in the right direction, but our next guest's work is far from done. young people are ready, willing and able to give back to the country. they need the opportunity to do it. >> i just always assumed work really hard, get an undergraduate degree, go to grad school if you need to and it will open up more doors. it didn't turn into that. >> the problems of our society are so big and so complex right now. it can be overwhelming. >> as a country we have things that need doing, and we have young people who can do those things. why not match the two with a sense of service that made this country great sf. >> that is a clip from "up to us" a 20-minute documentary chronicles two young americans. one working for ameri corps and one looking for a job.
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you can watch it on huffingtonpostourtime.org right on you or cam caomcast. it's a rough situation and particularly bad for young people. we got good news today and we have polling that shows attitudes are fairly optimistic about the future. i guess at the risk of sounding like a grandfather trying to relate to the kids here, among young people what is the mood right now about the economy? >> it's not -- i would say it's cautiously optimistic in the sense that it is slowly recovering. yet, the other crisis besides unemployment is actually student debt. we've been listening to people all across the country, and they're saying was college a worthwhile investment for me? am i going to get hi head above water in debt? the cruel irony of the debt is people took it out to get jobs in the first place by being told
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that if you go to college and you take out debt and you, obviously, pay your dues you might get a job. this documentary in particular focuses on young people who are idealistic and want to enlist their service to the to help bu economy, but they've been turned down time and time again. a million applications to americorps in the last two years have been rejected. >> that's incredible. >> let me ask, why are they being rejected? explain that a little bit. >> well, it comes down to money. under the kennedy serve america act there was funding for 250,000 americorps jobs. now only roughly 87,000 of those positions have been funded, far below where they anticipated they would be, and because of that, there's a huge demand and not enough jobs and money allocated. now, the problem with that, s.e., is that we can either pay for these people up front and invest in their success, or we can pay for them on the back end when they end up on food stamps
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or needing social welfare programs or incarcerated because we haven't given them the skiltskilt skills, the leadership, and the opportunity to succeed. >> we sketch out a different world for young people. let -- yet many believe they can change the world. why is it that millennials or echo boomers feel they can change the world? what are you finding? >> we've grown up in a time where we have entrepreneurship by necessity. when there's not enough jobs to go around. you can't depend on the government. yes, we definitely need critical investment. americo is a bipartisan no-brainer. it's criminal we haven't expanded it more aggressively. when we have grown up in a time and day when you have seen twitter and facebook and groupon and uber and i could go down the
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list of the incredible startups, that gives young people hope that we have the ingenuity to succeed and grow the economy and then, secondly, what's unique about our generation given we have grown up in a time of financial collapse is that we also recognize that you can't just be in it for profit and profit alone. we've started b corps which work on social impact and take on nonprofit business models. i think we're going to employ that same sense of social entrepreneurship in the way that we ultimately deal with moving the economy forward and solving the jobs crisis. >> matt, you follow two young people, both of whom are deeply committed to service. are there any policy prescriptions that you have in the film. do you advocate for a particular program of expanding service? >> absolutely. we advocate aggressively for a website called one million new jobs.org. and what that does is not only fully appropriate all the money toward the kennedy serve america act, but he can pants service to
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have an even more bold and ambitious appropriation so that the millions of unemployed people can obviously get trained and solve community problems like the ageing baby boomer population that needs nursing, classrooms that need to be filled for teaching, disaster relief and so on. and i might add most importantly to that same situation is the fact that by pushing for something bold, if the candidates embrace it, they're going to help mobilize the youth vote and we need vision right now in getting young people fired up. >> absolutely. >> matt sega l, you are in some elite company. that seat you have occupied for the last seg get very rarely goes to a noncyclist. you, molly ringwald, melissa harris perry. >> mike rowe. jon stewart weighs in on the president's performance.
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>> mr. president, everyone has parts of their jobs that they don't like as much, but they still have to do those things if they want to keep those jobs. and if you don't want to do it for yourself, think of your supporters. look what your performance did last night to one of them. >> i don't know what he was doing out there. i don't know how he let romney get away with the crap he threw out. what was he doing tonight? he went in there disarmed. where was obama tonight? >> are you happy? mr. president, you broke chris matthews.
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welcome back to this week in
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race. first, everyone's favorite segment, white folks be trippin'. on monday senator scott brown again used elizabeth warren's choice to define herself as an american indian to attack her. this from the campaign that loved the tomahawk chop. brown is mad she's claiming something she doesn't appear to be. guess someone has never driven his pickup truck to a vin disease ediesel movie. it was written obama will be reflected because he's black. suddenly it's a decisive advantage. on tuesday the bow tie tried to convince america that behind closed doors at events widely covered by the media obama turns into nath tugnat turner so be sf
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the scary black man. >> have you done any work in black communities? >> am i a black male? >> let's go to viewer mail. our first letter comes from george from d.c. surely being black is the truly advantageous situation in america today. look at obama, if wasn't black he wasn't be re-elected. george, have you been bumped on your head recently? by any significant metric, joblessness, incarceration, blacks is still fighting an uphill battle. our next letter is from ann from mars. she writes where are you and all the race-baiting liberals to so obsessed with race. race is a pervasive part of daily american life. talking about it doesn't perpetuate it any more than a meteorologist talking about precipitation talks about it make it rain. our last letter comes from scott from massachusetts. he writes, what is race? asking for